The princess bride phenomenon

The girl married the prince. Romantics everywhere swooned and cheered.

But as the world’s collective royal wedding hangover fades, and the confetti and novelty paraphernalia are cleared away, copies of Kate Middleton’s dress, bouquet and shoes are already in the making. Within weeks, brides around the globe can ‘get her look’, catering to the growing ‘princess bride phenomenon’.

If you’re wondering what the princess bride phenomenon is, flick through any modern wedding magazine. They’re full of expensive dresses (always a shade of white, almost always long), veils, tiaras and jewellery; rigorous beautification instructions; decoration and etiquette advice; exotic honeymoon ideas; and countless ads for “essential” beauty products and services, from tooth-whitening to cosmetic surgery. It implies that woman’s happiness is largely dependent upon having a “perfect” wedding and being a princess for a day.

Even if this perfect wedding means going into debt or delaying buying a house for years.

The average Australian wedding now costs around $50,000, a figure that itself inflates expectations. It is also 75 per cent more expensive than a decade ago. I doubt weddings are 75 per cent more meaningful or memorable.

The princess bride phenomenon is coupled with assumptions that only men can or should propose and a host of other anti-feminist traditions. These include only women wearing engagement rings (thus women alone advertising their ‘taken’ status); the white wedding dress, symbolising purity; the veil, symbolising innocence, modesty and submission to one’s husband; and the escort of the bride down the aisle by a father or male relative, where she is then ‘given away’, signifying the transfer of ownership and responsibility. Finally, there’s the tossing of the bouquet to a gaggle of girls each hoping to be the next recipient of a marriage proposal. (God forbid women themselves propose!)

So weddings today are more expensive, less grounded in reality and (ceremony venue aside) more traditional than ever.

Too often, the consequences of this princess bride phenomenon – apart from financial woe - include the absence in the wedding planning of the husband and life after marriage.

Arguably, both are very important to any marriage’s success.

The depressing excuse given for such outlandish behaviour is that the wedding day is meant to be the happiest day of the woman’s life, as if a change of marital status is the pinnacle of female achievement and joy. Women, in this conception, are passive, decorative recipients of a man’s desires and decisions. They are also seemingly more preoccupied with the gala than the promises made.

This is not to sneer at or devalue those that choose a lavish white wedding with the traditional trimmings. (Indeed all the weddings I’ve attended as a guest have been fairly traditional white weddings, and they’ve all been beautiful, meaningful celebrations). But why are so many weddings so drearily similar? Why have wedding expectations (and the industries that feed off them) increased exponentially?

And why do so many young women today - who grew up being told they can do anything, who are more educated and independent than any previous generation, and expect nothing less than equality to men in the workplace and in their relationships - unquestioningly accept the princess bride model and the antiquated, sexist rituals that generally accompany it? Particularly in an era when marriages are supposed to be a loving partnership between equals, rather than an act of property transfer as they have been in the past.

The feminist mothers of many of today’s newlyweds are scratching their heads at these questions. One of them, writing in the Good Weekend last year, described her daughter’s decision to go for the ‘full froth-and-flowers function’ as ‘baffling and even something of a betrayal’.

The most common explanation for the princess bride phenomenon is the persuasive success of the wedding industry and the expectations of their peers as shaped by the high-gloss, Hollywood fantasy machine and echoed by the media. Some blame the fictional heroines of today’s young women – compare shrinking, fawning Bella from the Twilight vampire series to independent firebrands Anne of Green Gables or Jo from Little Women. Perhaps it’s that marrying at an older age and after longer engagements than previous generations, today’s brides - and groomsmen – simply have more cash to splash.

Others suggest it’s a product of the fact almost 80 per cent of newlyweds live together before marriage, lessening its role as a rite of passage. Consequently, it is argued, these couples add solemnity to the ceremonial occasion with old traditions and expensive accompaniments.

Except many of these ‘traditions’ are not very old. Take the white wedding dress, a fashion started by Queen Victoria and copied by the aristocracy before trickling down to rest of the population. Before then, brides of all backgrounds wore the most beautiful outfit they owned or could afford, and it was generally brightly coloured. Even a generation or two ago, it was common for brides to wear suits or a coloured dress. It appears my generation – Y – supposedly the most individualistic, are the most uniform and unquestioning in their nuptial sartorial choices. (Cue image of a stadium of brides in white dresses and diamond engagement rings, chanting ‘we are all individuals’.)

But why does this uniformity combine the most offensive and misogynistic practices and the belief that conspicuous spending is necessary on the day officially marking and celebrating your union to your partner?

It’s probably unrealistic to expect the monarchy to lead by example, but with an estimated two billion viewers around the world, the royal wedding was an opportunity to make a positive statement about marriage and gender relations in the twenty-first century.

Instead, we saw a vibrant, educated and worldly young woman transformed into a demure, passive creature, sheathed in a veil and modest gown of virginal white (sorry, “ivory”), escorted by her father from doorstep to alter, where he alone “gave” her away in one of the most opulent weddings ever seen.

It was a lost opportunity to redefine the modern wedding.

Bronwyn Hinz is a researcher, writer and political consultant based at the University of Melbourne. Her book, Many Hopes, One Dream, was published by Australian Scholarly Publishing and launched by Malcolm Fraser and Lindsay Tanner in 2009. She recently survived the industrial wedding complex as a feminist bride.